STORM, part II.

Chapter 4, Under Examination

Inside a well-equipped laboratory, a man and woman in orange overalls were examining a second man. The latter, looking completely bored, was whistling an irritating tune.

"Please don't whistle! Try to breathe normally and relax." said the man in overalls, Physics Doctor Bronte, as he placed yet another electrode on the patient's forehead. He was a tall, thin man. With black hair pulled back thanks to some jelly. His bushy eyebrows nearly covered his brown eyes. He spoke in a deep, nasal voice.

"OK, OK, but I'm bored! You've been examining me with your devices for three hours... I have so many attached to me, I look like a Christmas tree!" answered the Dreamer.

"Christmas tree? Describe it to me, what species is it? Deciduous or evergreen? Could you draw me a picture?" the biologist Marzan asked very interested. The woman was small and tanned, with a mop of short red hair and lively green eyes. She had an upturned nose sprinkled with freckles. She looked like an elf from Celtic myth.

The dreamer chuckled while describing the mythical "Christmas tree" as a rare evergreen species, conical in shape, with bioluminescent fruits and colorful edible roots, called "gifts". It seemed that those explorers didn't know what Christmas was... and therefore the dreamer had decided to make a bit of fun off them.

After all, he'd been patient for hours and hours while they examined him. He told him everything he remembered about his life. About the hospital and the dream he had. Of the meeting with the Hooded One. He patiently explained to them that it was he who was dreaming them, that he hadn't materialized. Of course they didn't believe him. "This dream is getting boring! Isn't there anything else going on here?" he said annoyed.

At that moment Captain Harlan entered the laboratory and spoke to the dreamer: "How are your exams going? Are you feeling at ease sir..." She stopped frowning.

"We can't just keep calling you 'sir'. We should give you a name. Still nothing comes to mind?" the woman asked.

"I would say not, Captain. I remember having one, but I only remember that it was small, irrelevant, lowly or something like that." answered the dreamer.

"We could call him John Doe. It's the usual name when you have a patient whose name you don't know..." Dr. Bronte said.

"Oh no, please, not Doe! John is fine, but not Doe or Smith! Too common!" the patient complained.

"If it's all right with you, sir, we could call him 'Walker'. It would be appropriate, for someone who claims to be able to walk in dreams." Marzan proposed smiling.

"John Walker? Why not? He sounds good to me... An English name... nice." the dreamer, indeed John Walker now, savored the sound of that name as the three looked at him in confusion.

"English?" said the captain, "It's an Avalonian name, Mr. Walker. I've never heard of a language called English."

"Huh? Really? And what language are we speaking now?" Walker asked in amazement.

"We're conversing in Basic, Mr. Walker," the little biologist explained to him kindly. "Because it is very easy to learn."

Walker's interest was rekindled. It seems that in this dream everything was different, including Earth's history. He knew he was quite imaginative, but not to this extent. He asked the scientist for further explanations, while the captain and Dr. Bronte quietly left the room.

Once in the adjacent laboratory, the two watched the dreamer through a monitor. "Found anything?" asked the captain.

"I would say so. His genetic code is identical to ours. There is no doubt, he is human. The clothes are brand new, with no signs of wear. 'Walker''s body shows no signs of previous illnesses or surgery. It's as if it had just come out of a cloning tank, only it doesn't bear the characteristic signs. Finally, the strangest thing..." the scientist answered with an intense expression.

"Tell me. Nothing dangerous I hope?" Asked the Captain.

"I don't know. Judge for yourself," the man handed her a file, the result of the numerous tests carried out. The captain scanned it quickly.

"From the analyses performed, Mr. Walker would appear to be a materialization produced by the anomaly. The probabilistic biofilter is unable to block a realization of this level. Too sophisticated. It was designed to prevent the materialization of hostile organisms, but we didn't expect creatures with intelligence. The energy required for them to materialize would tend to infinity..." continued the doctor in a calm tone."

"So what? Get to the point." Answered the woman.

"The electroencephalograph, it's atypical. He's been in REM since we started examining him." Told her the Physicist.

"REM? But that's not possible. Don't you enter that phase only during sleep?" The captain was beginning to understand where Doctor Bronte was getting at.

"Exactly. Specifically during a dream." Answered the man.

"But Walker is awake and conscious!" Harlan said.

"At least that's how it appears to us but... in reality he is dreaming. I have no doubts. He daydreams, like a sleepwalker, but he is fully conscious. I have performed all the analyses, three times. This means that what he says, at least partially, could be true. It's all very fascinating! If you would allow me a biopsy of the brain..." The physicist's said with a feverish tone.

"Absolutely not! I won't go down in history as 'the Captain who ordered the vivisection of the first alien encountered by the Humanìtes'! Do we understand each other?" the Captain said firmly.

At that moment an audible alarm, followed by a flashing red light, began to blare. A computerized voice announced, "Alert! Breach Sector 7! Repeat, Breach Sector 7! Risk of Contamination! Alert!"

Chapter 5, Accident

The crew rushed to the control room, dragging Walker with them. The latter didn't feel worried at all. The idea of being in a dream calmed him. He counted on enjoying every event until the end.

Everyone else, on the other hand, didn't enjoy it at all. "Tune Reality Anchors!"

"Plasma Flow at maximum!"

"Probability Alliterators Full Power!"

"Locate Leak!"

"Leak Located, Sector 7, Warehouse 5, Near Airlock 2!"

"Onscreen!" their voices followed each other frantically.

An image appeared on the main monitor. The colored wind, which Walker had experienced hours earlier, was raging inside a corridor of ARC-07. Everything the wind touched was struck by crackling blue-red lightning, deforming itself beyond repair. Metal and plastic flowed into new organic structures. Flowers of material blossomed shaped by the tremendous energies of the storm of probability. Occasionally parts of the corridor would fog up and join the gaseous material from the wind.

Gonza, the big man who had captured him, turned to Walker. "The leak area is close to the chamber where we found that saboteur! He must have planted a bomb! We'll all die because of him!" he said grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him like a doll.

"Put him down, Gonza!" the Captain peremptorily commanded. "We have no evidence of what you claim, while we have plenty of evidence to the contrary. According to the analysis, Walker was materialized when we saw him appear on the screens. The stochastic decay test of his clothes confirms the timing with a margin of three seconds!"

"Then how do you explain the damage, huh? How do you explain it, Captain?" the man yelled, clearly out of control.

The woman looked at him coldly and said quietly, "Calm down, Lieutenant Gonza. You are a specialist selected from thousands. You are above such emotional displays. Maintain your objectivity."

The man calmed down: "I-I'm sorry Captain. I don't know what happened. This won't happen again." he said letting go of Walker, who quickly moved out of the way.

"Don't worry, Gonza. A difficult mission like ours would unnerve anyone. It's all right." the woman answered him.

"Yaral. Structural integrity report!" she said turning to the last member of the crew. A stocky man with a jovial expression on his gaunt face.

His brown hair and eyes were eclipsed by the huge aquiline nose that jutted above his thin mouth. "I've isolated Section 7, Captain. But we won't be able to hold much longer without repairing the damaged Reality Anchors."

He shook his head. "We have lost two. The first is in sector 5 and we can easily reach it. The second is in sector 7. An EVA operation will be required. We cannot repair it from the inside without reopening the sealed section. We can return to Earth if we reverse course now, but any delay puts us in danger." he said worriedly.

"Gonza! To airlock one. Put on your suit and get ready for the repairs. Yaral will follow you from here. I'll come with you!" the woman said quickly.

Doctor Bronte stepped in. "I have to remind you, Captain, that according to mission rules, you cannot go out on an EVA if another qualified crew member is available. I am, and will go with Lieutenant Gonza, if you agree."

The Captain looked at the man for a long time, then nodded his head in agreement. Gonza and Bronte hurried out of the room. Walker watched them leave, thinking he had misjudged the scientist. "He's a lot braver than he looks... I would never go out there, unless I'm not taking any chances." he said softly.

He was beginning to feel the excitement of the adventure he always wanted to experience but never dared to seek. 'Maybe I'm just a coward. But it's useless to be depressed now... I want to enjoy this dream. Especially now that it's getting interesting...' he thought.

The crew members followed the situation via monitors. Cameras showed the two men, wearing bulky spacesuits, opening the airlock. The wind blew into the room and the unshielded internal monitor shut down for safety.

The exterior camera came online, showing a man exiting the hatch. A blackout filter covered the images of the storm and the terrible Maelstrom that was inside it. In this way the hallucinogenic effect of the anomaly did not affect the crew members. The same filter covered the helmets of the spacesuits.

A panting voice came from the speaker, "Bronte Here, I'm starting the EVA. Gonza is busy checking the integrity of the airlock, for maximum safety. I'm approaching the damaged area. Gonza are you ready? I can see the leak..."

A second voice joined the first, while the camera showed the EVA specialist going outside with agility and then quickly heading towards his partner. "Coming. Do not approach the breach. You could be pushed against the hull by the probability differential between the storm and the interior of the ARC."

Realizing that he didn't quite understand what was happening, Walker asked, "If I'm not disturbing, what does ARC mean?"

The little biologist kindly whispered "ARC stands for Alternate Reality Cruiser, written in Avalonian. Ours is the 7th built, and the first to go so deep into the anomaly."

"The first? I hate to ask but... what happened to the others?" said Walker with a horrible foreboding.

"Two returned badly damaged, having only barely touched the storm. Three were lost without being heard from. The second to last was sabotaged. The MHS, the Movement for Humanite Security, an extremist terrorist group, claimed the attack. Before dissolving into the anomaly, it sent valuable data, which was used to plan this mission." Continued the woman.

Meanwhile, engineer Yaral and captain Harlan followed the dangerous maneuvers of the two cosmonauts, sending instructions and suggestions.

"But why risk so much to come here? To gain what? Apart from adventure and knowledge, of course." asked the dreamer.

The biologist sighed, "We are looking for a substance that materialized on the hull of the first two probes. We only found 15 grams of it, but according to the studies performed, it will be enough to generate clean energy for the whole planet, for 150 years. And we are still examining other possible uses." The scientist explained excitedly.

"Faster-than-light travel and communications, teleportation, materialization of objects, energy screens... pretty much anything you could want. But we need more samples. The ARC-06 collected 12 kilos of it, exactly in this area of the anomaly... if one can speak of areas in a place that doesn't even really exist."

Walker thought that his dream had created enough strong reasons, so he bothered the doctor no longer. He had basically ended up in a kind of Space Odyssey, like the movie he had seen as a child. Recalling the plot he said, "Did you check the computer? Usually, in these cases, it goes berserk killing the crew..."

Everyone turned and glared at him, then Dr. Bronte's voice came panting from the speakers. "Bronte here... I see the damage... the Anchor is not badly damaged... at least externally..." the crew heaved a sigh of relief.

"Gonza here... I'm opening the maintenance panel... Damn... it's all burned out here... we won't be able to repair it, sorry Captain." He clenched his fist in disappointment.

Inside the ship everyone was demoralized by the words, Walker clearly understood that. The captain turned on the microphone "Return. We will cancel the mission until we have time."

The woman addressed her companions in the control room. "Too bad… we were so close. But we collected a lot of data. It will be enough. Calculate the return course, Mr. Yaral." She glanced at Walker. They were going to bring something back after all.

Then the loudspeaker spoke again. "Bronte here, wait Captain! I want to take a better look at the damage... maybe we can replace it entirely or bypass the damaged parts... Gonza step aside... w-what are you doing... Gonza... stop …" Horrified they watched the two cosmonauts fight.

Gonza remained silent. Only a hoarse gasp came from his microphone. Their vital signs fluttered madly on the monitors.